Electric vehicles still have a long road ahead before they're accepted by most drivers, but that hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of their makers or fans.

The optimism about electric vehicles, or EVs, was palpable at a convention focusing on them this week: Plug-In 2012 Conference & Exposition, which ends today at the Convention Center.

Several speakers, including Britta Gross of General Motors' global energy systems, noted that the cost of buying an electric vehicle, such as the Chevrolet Volt, is getting closer to $30,000, the average price of a new gasoline-powered vehicle today.

Yet some at the convention acknowledged that price remains a stumbling block to more EV sales. Limited infrastructure for charging also is a problem.

The suggested retail price for the all-electric Nissan Leaf is $36,060, and for the Volt, it's almost $40,000, according to auto information website TrueCar.com. Buyers are eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs, which helps bring the cost down.

Despite the barriers to wider EV use, the city of San Antonio is interested in electric vehicles as a means of improving the city's air quality and to meet its goals as part of the SA2020 initiative, which has set goals for the city to meet by 2020, including improving air quality.

CPS Energy's Elaina Ball, vice president of technical services and energy solutions, said electric vehicles will benefit the community by reducing harmful emissions that come from gas-powered vehicles.

With the price of gas about $3.50 a gallon, an electric vehicle costs, per mile, about one-fourth of what it takes to operate a gas-powered vehicle, based on CPS' cost of electricity of about 9.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, Ball said.

CPS has installed 120 public chargers throughout San Antonio through a grant from the Energy Department, and the city-owned utility estimates that there are about 100 electric cars in greater San Antonio, a CPS spokeswoman said.

Local residents soon will be able to rent an electric car. Hertz on Demand, a car-sharing program, makes rental cars available at various San Antonio locations in a partnership with the city. Of the 18 vehicles it has now, one is an all-electric Nissan Leaf, said Laurence Doxsey, environmental policy director for the city's Office of Environmental Policy. Two more Leafs are expected to be part of the Hertz on Demand fleet soon, Doxsey said.

The cost starts at $8 an hour and varies depending on the vehicle.

Also, the city plans to test a trio of electric trucks from Boulder Electric Vehicle, Doxsey said. No city money will be used to test them, he noted.

The city will use the trucks for a year to see how they perform, while Boulder Electric will collect data from them.

At the end of the test period, two of the trucks “would be ours to keep at no cost,” Doxsey said.

The city is interested in testing EVs “so we can be better informed when we make acquisition decisions, because more and more of these vehicles will be available,” Doxsey said. “We want to have a good experience base with how much maintenance is needed, and whether the vehicles can do the work that needs to be done. It's not just a numbers analysis.”

Plug-In 2012 was organized by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization that conducts research and monitors developments relating to the generation, delivery and use of electricity.

Registered attendees numbered 369 at the convention, and there were 100 exhibitors. Key sponsors of Plug-In 2012 include CPS Energy and San Diego Gas & Electric.

vvaughan@express-news.net

Correction: A photo of a Nissan Leaf accompanied a story about the Plug-In 2012 Conference and Exposition on Thursday's page C1 of the Express-News and on mySA.com. The car was misidentified in the caption.